OTTAWA – Bell Media has officially petitioned the CRTC to grant it ownership and effective control of French-language specialty channels Historia and Séries+ after announcing plans to acquire them from Corus Entertainment.
Corus announced last October that it was selling the two channels to Bell Media for just over $200 million after first buying them for $277 million from Bell in 2014. (Ed note: an earlier version of this story misstated Corus' 2014 purchase price.)
According to Broadcasting Notice of Consultation CRTC 2018-95, Bell has valued the transaction at $202,695,232 and has proposed a $20,269,523 tangible benefits package, representing 10% of the value of the transaction. As an exception to the Commission’s tangible benefits policy, Bell requested to direct 82.8% of the benefits to two French-language components of certified independent production funds, namely the Bell Fund and the Fonds Harold Greenberg.
Interventions, comments or answers are due by April 19, 2018.
